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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

Marine microbes march to the beat of the same drum

WHEN photosynthetic marine microbes dance to the rhythm of day and night they set the toes of their non-photosynthetic cousins tapping.

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria belonging to the Prochlorococcus genus dominate the ocean surface. They make organic compounds that feed many other marine microbes.

Prochlorococcus species time their genetic activity to fit with day and night. A study now shows that non-photosynthetic microbes, which don’t usually do this, join in.

Edward DeLong and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology genetically sequenced bacterioplankton from the North Pacific subtropical gyre. They noticed all showed daily behaviour rhythms that corresponded with gene expression – the turning on or off of genes.

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As expected, expression patterns in Prochlorococcus were highly tuned to time of day, but similar patterns were seen in all the bacterioplankton (Science, doi.org/tpz). Co-author Elizabeth Ottesen of the University of Georgia in Athens says this may be because organisms rely on one another for metabolic functions.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Ocean life moves to the same beat”